Good-bye, Peter Kaplan, and Other News

New York Observer veteran Peter Kaplan has died, at the age of fifty-nine.

At the Girolamini Library in Naples, a librarian has been accused of “one of the most dramatic thefts ever to hit the rare-book world.” Pilfered volumes include rare editions of Aristotle, Descartes, and Machiavelli.

New Zealand’s national airline has painted a giant image of the dragon Smaug, from The Hobbit, on the side of one of its planes.